


Busywork

by damnslippyplanet



Series: Breaking Strength [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon Typical Levels of Blood, Frustrated Cannibal Noises, Frustrated Empath Noises, Lots of Murdering But Not So Much Husbanding, M/M, Not For Lack Of Interest On Hannibal's Part, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, murder fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-26
Packaged: 2018-05-03 03:20:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5274599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal finds out that killing alone just isn't much fun anymore, now that he's experienced the alternative.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The blood pool seems to have nearly reached its outer limits. There’s only so much blood in the human body, after all. It’s so predictable. He should probably get started. Instead, he fishes his phone out of his pocket and dials home._

There’s blood everywhere, and it’s more boring than Hannibal would have thought possible.

It’s not that he’s never gotten bored before with what he does. There are other reasons besides simple self-preservation and the fun of keeping his pursuers guessing that he’s changed up techniques, gone dormant for months or years at a time, and occasionally gone hunting far from home. 

Sometimes he needs to shake up his presentations to keep from getting bored by the routine. Sometimes he’s just looking to stock up on ingredients for a special dinner guest and he just needs to take the meat, dump the body, and get on with his day. It’s not always art, what he does with the bodies after they’re dead.

But this part, the actual _kill_ , has never been simply _boring_. There’s always been an enjoyment in that moment, even if the rest of it has sometimes been routine. This time he just can't find anything interesting in it.

He stares down impassively at the body on the floor, eyes glazed and unseeing, any hint of life fled. The pool of blood is spreading out toward him. He should probably clean it up. He should at least step back before it reaches his shoes.

He does that with a sigh, briefly missing his plastic suit. It was left behind, with so many other things, when they went on the run. 

He’s replaced most of what was important to him but not the suit. Will likes it better without and Hannibal likes Will slippery and fierce with blood, and then gentle after, sudsing and rinsing and combing the sticky dried red mess from Hannibal’s hair. The protective gear was easy enough to give up, in exchange for all he’s gotten in return. And he hasn’t killed without Will since their first time, so he hasn’t missed it.

Until now. Now when he’s killing without Will. Which, he supposes, explains the boredom.

Choosing the target had been exhilarating as ever. They’d done that together, picking their mark (rudeness to a waitress, one of the unforgivable sins, but really the reason’s not much more than a fig leaf). They followed the chosen tourist over a few days, learning his habits. This has been one of Will’s additions to Hannibal’s games. Hannibal used to prefer a quick and decisive kill; he’s learned from Will the alternative pleasures of waiting and watching. Sitting at a dinner table across the restaurant from their prey, taking turns watching him carefully so he doesn’t notice, plotting his demise _sotto voce_ , crafting and sharing a vision, building on each other’s designs until they’ve planned perfection together. 

They’d planned something beautiful for this one. Will would have ended up positively painted in blood; if he’d managed to stay clean somehow, Hannibal would have found an excuse to stumble and reach out, to touch and mark his pale skin with crimson. Sawing through the bones and arranging the scene would have taken some time but they’d planned for that, the tools are in the car trunk, everything’s ready.

It was going to be so perfect. Now it’s just...nothing. A certain pride in a job well done, his prey taken easily, dispatched precisely. But it’s an anemic shadow of what he’s come to know with Will since Francis Dolarhyde. 

This, this body on the floor of an empty garage isn’t fire, it isn’t the perfect synchronicity of wildcats taking down a gazelle. It’s not the sublimation of Hannibal’s erotic impulses into arterial spray and knifework.

This is none of that. It’s just meat. Blood and meat. It’s busywork. 

Hannibal steps back one more time although he probably doesn’t need to. The blood pool seems to have nearly reached its outer limits. There’s only so much blood in the human body, after all. It’s so predictable.

He should probably get started. Instead, he fishes his phone out of his pocket and dials home.

When Will answers the phone he’s sleepy sounding, probably still doped up on the painkillers the hospital sent home with him. It makes Hannibal itch with irritation that he’s no longer a doctor in their new lives, can’t prescribe for Will himself, can’t control and arrange and perfect everything that Will ingests. He tries not to think about that now. 

“Hannibal? Why are you calling? Did it go wrong?”

“No. The first part’s done. I’ll get to the rest soon. I just wanted to check in on you.”

“I’m fine.” Will manages a sleepy laugh. “I was asleep until you woke me up. I have books, I have a glass of water, I have the crutches if I absolutely must get up before you get home. I have snacks. I have pills. I think you gave me everything I need for days. You _are_ coming home tonight, right?”

“Of course. When this is done.”

“I’m sorry you’re solo on this one. Did it work out like we planned?” 

Hannibal closes his eyes and imagines Will the way he left him, snug in his bed in a nest of blankets, the broken leg propped up, cranky with the pain but softened around the edges by the drugs. He couldn’t possibly have done this tonight so newly injured, and he’d insisted Hannibal go ahead without him before their intended victim returned home and out of their reach, and he’d been quite convincing about it. Hannibal wishes now he’d scrapped the whole thing and stayed home. Made Will some soup.

“Entirely. He was predictable to a fault.” 

“Good. Finish it up and come home.”

Hannibal tries not to hear a slight note of something, maybe a plea, in his own voice as he offers, “I’m considering skipping the display. We can save that for another time when you can participate. I might just dump him and come home early.” 

“Don’t you dare.” Will’s voice is suddenly a little sharp, a little bit of a warning, he’s awake enough to be bossy in that precise way that melts Hannibal. “I want to see it just the way we planned it. If I can’t be there, you’ll have to show me.”

“You aren’t seriously suggesting I bring home photographic evidence.”

“No need. Do it right, and he’ll be on the front page of the papers in two days, tops. I want to see that. Make it good. Make me jealous I’m not there.”

Hannibal can tell from Will’s voice that he already is a little jealous, and the thought brings with it a certain revived interest in the possibilities of the scene before him. Setting up the display by himself doesn’t carry any interest now, but doing it knowing Will is going to see the end result is another matter altogether. 

“I think I may be able to manage that. I’m going to get to work, then. Get some rest.”

“I’ll rest better if you stop calling me. Be careful. Wake me up when you get in so I know you’re home, okay?”

“Goodnight, Will.” Hannibal hangs up and slips the phone back into his pocket. He knows he won’t wake Will. 

He’ll stand in Will’s doorway for a while and resist the urge to wake him just to hear his voice. He’ll shower the blood off by himself for the first time in the year since they went on the run and he’ll imagine it’s Will’s hands moving in his hair and over his skin, the closest to intimacy they get. He’ll go to his own bed aching, without even the customary solace of being able to play back fresh memories of Will’s breathing erratic and harsh, his movements lithe when he’s so deep into his hunting that he forgets to be self-conscious.

But before any of that, Hannibal will roll up his sleeves, bring in the tools from the car, and get to work. He’ll bend and break and cut and twist and he begins to think it won’t be as boring as he’d thought it would be, just a few minutes ago.

He’ll make art for Will. And then tomorrow he’ll make soup. If the police find the body soon enough, he may be able to bring Will the soup and the newspaper together, and he can read the articles while Will eats and his leg mends.

While Will heals, they can start planning their next kill. It will probably take a while but Hannibal can be patient until then.

He doesn’t think he’ll bother killing alone again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Carried on Hannibal’s words, Will almost hears the sounds of the knife and the saw, almost feels the blood, almost sees their shared vision made real. Almost, but not quite. The gap between being there with Hannibal and hearing about it from Hannibal is miniscule and unbridgeable all at once. He feels an almost physical ache, something like jealousy, something like pain._

The carefully-constructed pillow forts bracketing his cast are apparently no match for the tossing and turning Will Graham can do in the middle of the night, because eventually a dream twists his body hard enough that he jars his broken leg and wakes up with a yelp as pain shoots through him like lightning.

His semi-conscious response to pain is apparently to try to push himself upright to see and perhaps fight whatever has attacked him. The sudden motion just makes it hurt more, and he growls “ _Fuck_!” and freezes entirely, waiting for his brain to catch up with his body because whatever his body is doing without his brain running it is clearly a terrible fucking idea.

Will stays there frozen, propped up on one elbow, until the jolt of pain rolls through him and mostly out again, subsiding into a low steady throb that hurts but doesn’t disable. Then he eases very slowly into sitting upright, leans back against the headboard, and mumbles “ _fuck"_ again, just for good measure, just because he feels like it.

The clock reads 4:13 a.m. and he glares at it as if he can somehow force the numbers to change to something less personally offensive. Time doesn’t contort itself to please him, so he gives up and turns on the lamp on his bedside table. In the process he nearly knocks his pill bottle off the table and his glass of water into his lap, but resists mumbling a third even quieter more resigned _fuck_ because at a certain point you just accept that nothing is going the way you want it to and continued protest is futile.

He’s supposed to wait until 6 a.m. for his next dose of painkillers but he hurts now, and the fact that if he goes through the bottle too fast he’s going to run out and be in serious pain later is a problem for Future Will. He shakes another pill into his palm, tosses it down his throat and chases it with a gulp of water, and waits for it to kick in.

After a few minutes he feels like maybe he can move again without the resulting pain and he’s just starting to ease himself back down when he hears the front door, followed by footsteps.

He calls “I’m already awake, you don’t have to be quiet” through his open bedroom door and Hannibal’s footsteps speed up until he’s there in Will’s doorway. He’s cleaned up some, enough to drive home at night and be moderately inconspicuous. But not enough to hide anything from Will, who’s seen Hannibal like this before, many times now. He knows Hannibal’s washed his hands and face and changed clothes but that if Will were to get in close he’d find lingering specks of blood like freckles dotting Hannibal's skin and that Hannibal will smell like copper and like the sea that swallowed them both a year ago and spat them out into this strange new life they share.

Something in his stomach turn and twists. He knows where the boundaries are in daylight, and on the nights that don’t end in blood. He set them and Hannibal mostly respects them. It’s mostly easy. They’re partners and, against all odds after all that has transpired, _friends_. By now he can admit to himself that there’s love there too, that they form a circuit that’s incomplete when they’re not together. But he’s not wired right to return the _more_ that Hannibal wants from him. _Most_ of the time he’s not wired right. When Hannibal’s like _this,_ he’s less certain. Sometimes Will finds he's wired right after all, when they’ve spilled blood together. And that’s so much _worse_ than if he could just want Hannibal the rest of the time that Will can’t admit to it at all.

He’s so fucking broken. His leg is the least of it. If Hannibal came a few steps closer, Will's not entirely sure he wouldn't try to drag him into bed, despite the leg, despite or because of the blood. He could blame it on the heavy-duty drugs making him act strangely. It wouldn't be true.

None of this is news. None of this is getting solved tonight or anytime soon. Will passes a hand over his eyes and tries not to think about the blood he would smell if Hannibal came closer and just says, “Welcome home. Everything okay?”

Hannibal looks tired but smug. “Keep an eye out for the headlines in a day or two. I think you’ll approve.” His glance flickers to the clock and he frowns just slightly. “Why are you awake? Do you need something?”

“Just couldn’t sleep. Waiting for the good drugs to kick in and then I’ll give it another try.” 

Will can see Hannibal biting back the urge to give advice; you can take the medical license away from the runaway criminal but not the urge to boss people around incessantly. Hannibal manages to rein in whatever he was going to say, though, and just nods. “I’m going to clean up. I’ll check back in before I go to sleep to see if you need anything else.”

Usually Will would help. It’s a weird little ritual that they developed their first few times and don’t really talk about now. Checking and tending wounds turned predictably into cleaning wounds turned somehow into Hannibal washing Will’s hair for him in the bathtub. Will’s intuition tells him this is a _thing_ Hannibal does, has done for other people, but particularly enjoys doing for Will. He told himself it was fine, they were grownups, Hannibal’s fancy bath salts make the water basically opaque anyway, it wasn’t that weird. And then somehow that imperceptibly became Will returning the favor and he intuited just as easily that no one, or maybe very few people, have ever done _that_. It didn’t really take intuition, even, just observing the way Hannibal melts under touch, watery streams of red running down his face as the blood rinses from his hair under Will's fingers. They talk sometimes, during, revisiting the events just past, providing witness for each other.

It’s weird. Will knows it’s weird. But is it really any weirder than the rest of their lives? He’s less sure about that. He’s lost any sort of objective measure for what “normal” is.

Before he can consider that any further, he blurts out, “Do you need help? I mean. I can’t get the cast wet. I’d have to be careful. But if you need help…”

Hannibal smiles like sunrise, like something blooming, but shakes his head. “I’ll manage. But thank you.” He hesitates, though, before he turns away. “If you’re still awake when I’m done, I can tell you about my evening. An exclusive preview of tomorrow’s headlines.”

Will nods. “I’d like that. I’ll try to stay awake. Go on. Don't drip blood on the carpet. Go.” He waves Hannibal off down the hallway to his own bedroom and closes his eyes to wait.

He drifts for a while, not quite awake or asleep, lassitude slowly spreading through his limbs from painkillers and sleepiness and relief that Hannibal's home safe. He tries to stay awake.

He must not quite manage it, because the next thing he knows it’s daylight. The house is quiet and doesn’t smell of coffee or breakfast. Hannibal must be sleeping in after his busy night.

Will maneuvers himself up and onto the crutches with a certain amount of grumbling. He doesn’t have anyone to blame but himself for the stupid accident, and god knows he’s been hurt worse, but “at least I did it to myself this time” isn’t exactly a comfort. He makes his way clumsily to the bathroom and manages not to fall over during his morning ablutions. He can feel the painkillers at the edges of his mind, blunting things just slightly, as if his actions are half a second behind his mind. 

He moves as quietly as he can down the hallway to peek in the open door of Hannibal’s room. Sure enough, he’s out like a light, an unusual sight for Will, who’s usually the last to wake. Hannibal sleeps apparently easily, one leg kicked out from the blankets, hair mussed, breath deep and even. He looks like he’ll be out for a while.

Will heads for the kitchen, deeply grateful their home doesn’t have many stairs, and considers his options. He actually makes a pretty good breakfast when he can convince Hannibal to turn over control of the kitchen, but he’s hobbled at the moment. Something simple, something he can do sitting down if he pulls a stool over to the counter.

Coffee, fruit, cereal. It’ll have to be good enough. If Hannibal wakes up and wants a breakfast banquet he can handle that himself.

Will slowly makes his way from refrigerator to counter and back again, multiple trips with a single item each time as that’s all he can figure out how to carry. He curses inventively at an apple that slips from his fingers and rolls away under the counter where he has no hope of retrieving it without falling over.

Eventually he manages to seat himself on the kitchen stool in front of a small pile of breakfast items, and he gets to work. He starts with the coffee; he’s going to need some of that immediately.

He manages enough breakfast to satisfy his growling stomach and then ponders his next move. He should probably go back to bed, but he has a terrible feeling Hannibal’s going to try to keep him there, immobile and healing, as much as possible, and he’s not in any hurry to begin that particular battle of wills.

Instead he moves into the living room, getting faster on the crutches, and manages to pick up and carry a tablet with him over to the sofa. He settles in with his leg swung up alongside him, the other on the floor to brace himself, and manages the whole maneuver without any additional cursing. 

He lies back and starts to flip through local news on the tablet, looking for any hint of Hannibal’s activities the night before. It’s too soon for anything real but he’s hoping for a glimpse. He turns up nothing, to his annoyance.

He pulls up his book collection and settles in to read while he waits for Hannibal to wake. He’s working through _Don Quixote_ and it absorbs him for nearly an hour and a half until Hannibal appears in pajama pants and t-shirt, rumpled but otherwise apparently none the worse for his busy evening and unusually late lie-in.

Will puts the tablet down and gestures toward the kitchen. “Good morning. There’s coffee but you’ll need to reheat it. And I left a bit of a mess. Couldn’t quite figure out how to wash dishes without falling over.”

“I’ll take care of it. After the coffee. Good morning, Will.” Hannibal heads for the kitchen. His movements are a little less precise than usual, a little more relaxed. Will leaves the tablet on his lap, tips his head back against the cushion and just listens to Hannibal moving around the kitchen. Running water, clinking dishes, the sounds of Hannibal pouring out the rest of the coffee to make a fresh batch, because of course he’s doing that. Will mouths “ _snob_ ” to the empty room and smiles despite himself, and then smiles again when Hannibal returns bearing two fresh cups, not just one.

“Thank you.” He curls his fingers around the warm mug and breathes it in before taking a sip. It tastes better when Hannibal makes it, and Will doesn’t know why because he’s watched Hannibal do it hundreds of times now. He does exactly the same things. It’s never as good. 

Hannibal opts for the easy chair near Will’s head rather than trying to fit onto the sofa and risk jarring Will’s leg, He nods toward the tablet. “Anything interesting?”

“Not yet. I’ll check again later. Might be something online by the afternoon. I’d rather hear about it from you first, anyway. You owe me a story.” 

“Are you up to it? Do you need anything first?”

Will tries to suppress an eye roll. “I’m fine, _Doctor_ Lecter.” He emphasizes the title ever so slightly, ever so sarcastically. He’s never been a good patient despite all his days in hospitals. He’s never done well being fussed over. “I’m not due for another pill for two more hours, and if I don’t move from this spot, my leg won’t hurt much. So keep me busy while I sit still. Tell me all about it.”

He can sense Hannibal longing to fuss more, but he seems to suppress the impulse. He leans back into the armchair, takes a thoughful sip of coffee as he orders his thoughts, and starts in. 

He tells Will all about the night in detail, so vivid Will almost feels as if he’d been there. He follows the victim through Hannibal’s eyes, almost feels his own hands disabling him and stuffing him into the plastic-lined trunk, almost feels his own heart thumping wildly. (Although he reminds himself Hannibal’s probably didn’t; Hannibal retains his preternatural calm during this part. His heart only races later, when he and Will move as one to create something new and savagely beautiful, their creations so thoroughly discussed beforehand that they barely speak while doing it, don't need to, they’re barely separate people as they bend and break and transform.)

Carried on Hannibal’s words, Will almost hears the sounds of the knife and the saw, almost feels the blood, almost sees their shared vision made real. _Almost_ , but not quite. The gap between _being there with Hannibal_ and _hearing about it from Hannibal_ is miniscule and unbridgeable all at once. He feels an almost physical ache, something like jealousy, something like pain.

He doesn’t quite realize the story’s over until he finds Hannibal looking at him oddly, and realizes his face must be showing more of his thoughts than he meant it to. Hannibal asks, “Are you all right? Does your leg hurt?”

He tries to rearrange his features quickly into something a little less telling before he sips again at the coffee, now cooled and forgotten. “No. Yes. Maybe a little. I think maybe I should go lie down again for a while. Give me a hand?”

Hannibal eases Will up and hands him his crutches, and carries his coffee for him into his room. Arranges his pillows, refills his water glass, fetches the tablet so Will can keep reading. All of his tasks done, he perches gingerly on the unoccupied side of the bed, seemingly reluctant to leave. He suggests, “I thought I might make some soup later, for lunch.”

Will doesn’t ask who’s going to be in the soup. He doesn’t have to. He nods and tells Hannibal that he’d like soup.

Hannibal gathers himself to go and Will finds himself unaccountably reaching out, snagging Hannibal’s wrist with a hand, wincing as the sudden movement jostles his injured leg. “Hannibal.”

“Yes?” He thinks there’s an uncertainty in Hannibal’s voice, a worry.

He says it before he can think too hard about his motivations. “Would you be willing to wait for me, before you go hunting again? I don’t think I like you doing it without me.”

Will for once can’t quite read the expression that flits across Hannibal’s face, like a private joke Will’s not privy to. But he answers, “I think I could manage that sacrifice if it would please you."

“It would.”

They lock eyes for a moment and then Hannibal nods and leaves the room. 

Will waits until Hannibal’s almost gone and then notes, “Hannibal?” He gets a raised eyebrow in response as Hannibal stills again, just out the door. “You might not have to wait that long.” He grins a little impertinently and gestures toward his leg, toward the crutches. “Don’t you think I’d make _spectacular_ bait once I’m moving around just a little better? All slow-moving and helpless?”

Hannibal doesn’t respond except with a broad, open smile, but Will’s pretty sure he hears him humming as he moves off down the hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, it was _supposed_ to be a one shot. I tried. Will wanted his say. In theory it's done now. We'll see. Hush, boys, I have other things to write.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I like to just totally ignore the fact that I don't actually think Will would slip easily into being a full-on murder machine, for the sake of an idea that amuses me. This idea amused me. 
> 
> If it amuses you too I would love to hear about it - kudos, comments, or visits to [my Tumblr](http://damnslippyplanet.tumblr.com) are all welcome.


End file.
